Chapter 1: Introducing the Joomla! Content Management System
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding open source content management
Discovering the Joomla! CMS and what it can do
Reviewing Joomla! functionality and basic architecture
Exploring the Joomla! community and how you can get involved
Joomla! is an award-winning content management system that brings powerful website creation and management tools to the masses. You don't have to be a programmer to use Joomla! because you don't need to work with the code to install, set up, or manage your site. To get started, all you need is access to a web-hosting service to install Joomla! and a web browser to create and manage your site. Moreover, the Joomla! content management system is open source, and therefore free of licensing fees and restrictions on use.
Joomla! is one of the most popular content management systems in use today, with millions of successful implementations. With the arrival of Joomla! 3, the system entered a new era, with greatly enhanced usability, extended compatibility, and an emphasis on the ability to create mobile-friendly, responsive websites. You can also use Joomla! as a framework for the development of powerful web applications, via the Joomla! Platform.
This introductory chapter explores the advantages of using both Joomla! and open source, and provides you with the big picture of how Joomla! works and how you can use it to build or manage your own website.
Discovering Open Source Content Management
A content management system, or CMS, is a software tool that you install on a server. The software enables you to publish pages on a website and to manage the website's features, content, and users through an easy-to-use browser-based interface. Historically, full-featured CMS products were expensive, and dominated by major brand names such as BroadVision, Vignette, and Microsoft. Over the last decade, however, the market shifted as robust open source products arrived on the scene, supplementing, and in some cases supplanting, their commercial brethren.
The appearance of viable open source content management solutions has had a significant impact on the market, essentially democratizing the content management space. Small businesses and individuals that could never before afford a proper CMS can now implement an open source solution and create a web presence that is competitive with much larger firms. As open source systems increased in stability and functionality, they started to find a place in larger firms. Today you can find open source CMS products at every level of business, both public and private.
Deciding to use a CMS
Content management systems make maintaining a website more practical and affordable. In the past, if you wanted to build a website, you created a set of static HTML pages — that is, you hard-coded each page with your text and images. The old approach suffered from numerous limitations, particularly in terms of scalability and ease of management; with hard-coded pages, you are forever working with the code on each page whenever you want to make a change. Modifying the contents of a page by manually changing the code is both time consuming and labor intensive. Owning a static site also locks you into hiring people with coding skills to perform content management tasks.
In contrast, if you use a CMS to power your website, anyone with basic skills can make changes to the site. You do not need a programmer to change the text or the images on a page. Most systems, including Joomla!, use a content management interface that is similar to what you see in common word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word.
With a CMS, you gain significant advantages, including
• Increased control over your website
• Improved time to market with content changes
• Lower cost per page
• Decreased total cost of ownership for your site
A CMS typically enables you to:
• Identify key users and their roles
• Assign roles and responsibilities
• Define workflow
• Schedule and publish content
• Limit access to content and functionality
• Administer the system
• Take the site offline to perform maintenance tasks
• Add components
Note
Numerous types of content management systems are available; some focus on particular specialties. Systems such as Joomla! are typically labeled web content management systems because they focus primarily on managing a website, its content, and users. Other systems focus on document management, catalog management, or digital asset management. If you are looking for a specialized system, such as a document management system, then you should research the alternatives available to find the best match for your needs.
Deciding to use open source
Open source is about freedom; not simply the ideal of freedom, but the commercial reality of freedom. Open source software does not carry licensing or subscription fees. Although the initial attraction of open source software may be the fact that it is free of charge, you are likely to find very quickly that the long-term advantage of open source lies in two other characteristics. First, the code is accessible. Unlike many commercial products that not only hide their code but also forbid you from modifying it, open source code is visible and you are free to modify the code of an open source product to suit your specific needs. Second, open source protects you from being tied to a specific vendor. If you adopt an open source solution, you can partner with the developer of your choice to assist you. If you deploy a system such as Joomla!, which is based on popular and common technologies, you need not dread having to change vendors in the future, as it is relatively easy to find people who are familiar with the system and have the skills needed to work on it. Taken together, the initial cost advantage plus the long-term benefits of having access to the code and your choice of vendors create a compelling argument in favor of open source.
While the positive attributes of open source make it a great choice for many organizations, no solution is completely without disadvantages, and those negative aspects need to be a part of your decision process as well. If your firm has existing software deployed on a proprietary system, a change to open s...